Page 59 of Court of Rivals
“Suchbig boy dreams,” I say, bopping him on the nose with each word.
And he and Lucien are definitely related, because his look of horror is remarkably similar to his brother’s.These three can throw anything they want at me, but nothing is going to scare me off.
We get on our dragons. I settle against the saddle, surprised by how much more secure I feel.This… this is going to be nice. Hopefully, it’ll allow me to fly and fight the way the others already know how to do.
In the practice yard, a servant comes rushing out and stops near me and Ebron, looking uncertain, and nervous around my very large dragon. “My lady, you have a message.”
“A message?” I ask, confused.
The servant rings his hands. “From your fiance.”
“Fiance?” All three princes repeat, sounding shocked.
Oh, fuck. That’s the last thing I want to deal with right now.“We’re riding. I’ll hear the message later,” I say, then encourage Ebron to go.
To my relief, he flaps his wings and takes off into the sky. We quickly leave the academy, and my unwanted message, far behind. The three princes take off after me, and then I see the other dragons entering the training yard, collecting their own riders.
We circle over the academy, waiting for the others, and I can feel tension all around me. Tension from the female dragons, and tension from the princes. I wonder what they’re thinking.Are they trying to decide how I could’ve attracted any man? Are they wondering how a fiance might disturb their little asshole project?I can’t be sure. Those three are hard to figure out.
Beyond them, I wonder what I’m supposed to do. Tesson is clearly not my fiance any longer. I’m sure while I was gone my parents made that clear to him. If that’s not enough for him, unfortunately for him, I’m not holding back any longer. I’m going to make it very clear that there’s nothing between us.
The other dragon riders join us in the air until there are twelve of us. My thoughts stray back to the book Roland had showed me, and I try to give what I remember a try, even though I don’t remember all of it.Surely knowing the ways they do things should help them come around to me?
“Arrow Formation!” I shout over the wind.
What’s Arrow Formation?Ebron asks.
I try to picture what the formation looks like and send the image to him, but I’m not sure it works like that.Just tell the females and fly straight. They’ll know what to do.
He does as I ask, and we fall into a perfect Arrow Formation. We move around this way for a while, changing course, weavingand maneuvering, and everyone manages to stay in formation. It’s actually kind of cool.
“Encircling Spiral Formation,” I order, again telling Ebron just to fly straight and communicate the order with the others.
Everyone does as we say. I know, eventually, I’ll have to learn the hand signals, because the riders probably aren’t happy following their dragons’ lead, but this will have to do for now. We fly further and further away from the city, out across the ocean, because I know the rest of our practice would be better done where we won’t risk hurting anyone.
We practice drive-and-strikes. All of us sweeping down as if to attack an enemy below us. The good thing is that everything is made easier by the saddle, easier, but not easy. Rolling evasions are a bit nauseating, but I adjust to them the best I can, holding on for dear life as Ebron rolls to avoid an “attack” from a Hollowborn in the air. We practice reversing directions in midflight, which isn’t really possible, but we try, and then coordinated attacks. All of us flaming at an imaginary target at the same time, then us doing it in staggered bursts. By the end of it, everyone seems tired, and I feel proud. I ran the practice. The way they wanted.
I think.
I’m about to tell everyone to head back to the city when some unknown disturbance ripples through Ebron and I. Tensing, I feel his muscles do the same beneath me.
What’s wrong? What are we sensing?
Ebron heads straight up, ignoring the other dragons, rising above the clouds, then stopping abruptly. Just in front of us, we come face-to-face with a Hollowborn, riding a bone wyrm. Everything inside of me stills, and the world around me freezes. I’ve heard it whispered that the Hollowborn aren’t human. That they’re fantastical creatures from the underworld meant to look like humans, but I’ve never believed it until now.
The man in front of me has no hair. He wears all black, leaving only his head and neck exposed. His skin is ghostly white, black surrounds his eyes, and black lines go up and down his lips, expanding out, like teeth in a skull. Black covers his lower cheekbones, giving him the sharp angular lines of a skull. A black… almost piece of jewelry rests in the center of his forehead, going all the way back behind him.
He and the bone wyrm look to be creatures of death. The bone wyrm is nothing but the skeleton of a dragon, that somehow manages to stay in the air. His bone wyrm is smaller than Ebron, a female, like most bone wyrms, and yet no less powerful.
I’d seen that for myself in the clearing.
We regard each other for a long moment, him glancing over my dragon and then at me as if he doesn’t quite know what to do with me. Not that I blame him. I can’t imagine a Hollowborn has ever seen a male dragon before, which certainly means they’ve never seen a female rider before.
This also means that as badly as a Hollowborn wants a dragon, Ebron may have just become his newest goal.If you have to have a dragon, might as well steal the largest one, right?
I blink, the world coming back into focus.Run!I tell Ebron
It is one bone wyrm.I can handle him.
